


Goodbye, Hello, I’m Coming With You

by TheMoments (TBs_LMC)



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Epic Friendship, Friendship, Introspection, M/M, Male Friendship, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:48:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27754090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TBs_LMC/pseuds/TheMoments
Summary: After Meredith's transformation, Hawke waits for the ship that marks the beginning of his life on the run with Anders. He's said his good-byes. Made hasty arrangements. His thoughts are consumed as he broods and reflects in the shadows. And then two becomes unexpectedly more.
Relationships: Anders/Male Hawke
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	Goodbye, Hello, I’m Coming With You

**Author's Note:**

> Universe: Dragon Age II  
> Tag: Post-Final Battle
> 
> Veers from the game's official ending because it doesn't involve Hawke and his team scattering to the hills in the immediate aftermath of Meredith's defeat.
> 
> First Dragon Age fic, though I've played Origins, II and Inquisition four (maybe more?) times completely through at this point. I have not, however, read any of the comics or books so please understand that anything I write does not take those additional sources into account.

Somehow, he’d always known it would come to this. So many hearts broken. So many lives lost. For good? For bad? Did any of it matter? Hawke didn’t have a clue.

He sat in the shadows of one of the many nondescript warehouses bordering the docks in Lowtown waiting for the boat that was meant to ferry he and Anders away from Kirkwall for good. Where the hell Anders was getting one he hadn’t a clue and didn’t much care.

But it was going to be forever. The hours, the blood, the sweat, the tears that had fallen during his years in Kirkwall…all of it to be lost in the rubble, forgotten in legends, lost in myth. Varric had told him all these things and more as they’d said their short and very painful good-byes.

His Mabari would follow later. Bodahn and Sandal were seeing to the estate, keeping up appearances while at the same time forwarding along what those on the run would need. Arrangements were made, thoughts for friends and familiar places severed from his psyche for self-preservation, farewells hastily collected and doled out.

He remembered Aveline’s tearful eyes. He’d never even seen her cry over Wesley and yet there she was, misty, trying to explain why she had to stay in Kirkwall even though no explanation was required. She had Donnic. She had the city guard, massive headaches caused by the inescapable events that had marred, scarred and changed the city-state for good.

He pictured Varric’s apologetic face, sad eyes, regretting the fact that he couldn’t just let his hometown descend into chaos even as Knight-Captain Cullen rallied what little was left of the Templar order there to keep peace, to organize, to try to put bricks back together since people couldn’t be.

Daisy, and when had Hawke begun calling her Varric’s nickname instead of her real one, anyway? Shyly looking away and kicking him out of her alienage home before she started crying in earnest. He’d heard her wail some Dalish string of words as he’d made his way up the steps.

It was Hawke’s unshakable, unfathomable, unbelievable, unhealthy and unending love of Anders that had brought them to this point. The men were officially fugitives now. They would be hunted. By everyone and anyone associated with the Chantry, undoubtedly. By the Prince of Starkhaven who was willing to raze a city to avenge a cleric but unwilling to do so to avenge his own blood family, beyond the shadow of a doubt. By anyone and everyone who had an axe to grind with anything that had happened in Kirkwall and probably all of Thedas, blights included.

He wondered briefly if this was why the Hero of Ferelden, after inexplicably surviving the slaying of an archdemon, had disappeared, too. Maybe this was what it was to be a hero. Although at least the Hero’s lover hadn’t blown a religious symbol all to hell in the name of mage freedom. The shit of it was, Hawke knew damn well if Anders _had_ come to him, he would first have tried to talk him out of it and then joined to help him.

Anders knew him so well.

Isabela, long gone with her treasure. Was she even still alive? None of them knew. Carver, oh, how he loved his Grey Warden brother and how much it had ached to see him take his leave after the battle with Meredith. Their hug, while brief, was probably the last time they would see each other for whatever remained of their lives. It stung.

How Cullen, in those last confusing, frightening moments after Meredith’s downfall had, with sword drawn, looked into his eyes. How the silent understanding had passed between men who had never quite become friends, but Hawke had cared in spite of the man being a Templar. Something about him had grown on Hawke. Perhaps his belief that wasn’t so fervent as Sebastian’s, allowing him to question what he’d been taught in favor of his own conscience. How the man who should have killed him, Anders and the rest of his band on the spot without question for the number of Templars they’d slaughtered within thirty minutes alone…had simply let them walk out of the grisly scene and, Hawke presumed, was giving them plenty of time to escape before making token gestures to apprehend them.

Hawke bowed his head. So many gone. So many corrupted. So many in pain. Abominations. Blood magic. Even Orsino, the First Enchanter, why, _why?_ So much terror. So much agony, sorrow, mayhem. Aveline had been right. Hawke was the center of a hurricane, his beliefs and actions and heart raised and felled an entire city, a Dalish keeper, his whole family, all these people he’d come to call friends. And he’d never even tried to make it that way. He just…was who he was.

And above it all, Hawke had spent his entire life running, hiding and lying just because he was a mage. It was like…being born with a different skin color, or being from another country or something. Like he wasn’t a person at all just because he could cast spells and bend the air to his will. For Maker’s sake, surely no one expected him to be okay with the Right of Annulment? Nobody in their right mind would allow the kinds of abuses to happen to their loved ones inside their own walls that Meredith and others within the Circle had perpetuated upon those held prisoner there.

How could he ever be asked to stand by and not only sanction but fight alongside those who felt everyone like him and his beautiful, long-gone sister should be murdered or worse, made Tranquil? Anders had said it so many times before and even Orsino, before his last desperate act of blood magic had asked, why don’t they just drown us as babies? Why give us hope?

And that, truly, was the crux of what drove Anders to the act he’d committed. Something he’d never really been able to put into words because he’d never been able to articulate beyond his anger and hatred of the atrocities that took place in Circles. Sundering a mage from what made them human, or elvhen, or whatever species they were – why was such an act even permitted? To be Tranquil was a fate worse than death. Hawke and every mage he’d ever asked about it, would rather be put to death or die fighting for their freedom than to be stripped of their personalities and indeed, their very souls.

The arguments had been made, _ad nauseum_. The manifestos in their various forms, written by Anders, some burned, some left everywhere around the city. People understood and they didn’t. Sympathized, empathized, wanted to bury their heads in the sand because it was easier and nobody had the right answer. Not even Hawke. He grimaced. No, he would never have chosen or probably even thought to do what Anders had. But Hawke had caused more death and destruction in all his years in Kirkwall, many times over, than Anders’ single galvanizing action.

Yet which would be remembered? Hawke was the Champion, right? Though after he escaped with Anders, who knew whether that title would hold. Yet he was, and Anders was a pariah and still he couldn’t wait to feel their lips move together, their hands remove each others’ clothing and armor and for the incredible synergy of their magics to align and meld and fuse and make every moment that much more heightened than anyone not them could ever hope to experience during intimate acts of the most selfless and selfish kind.

When Anders looked at him it was with a reverence, almost a worshipfulness, that made Hawke feel like the most cherished being in all the Maker’s sight. His soft voice calling him ‘love’ or the near-desperation when he clutched Hawke impossibly close as he pumped out his release inside Anders’ body, as though afraid if he opened his eyes, Hawke would dematerialize into the Fade, never having existed with him at all.

Fenris, who after everything they had done with each other, everything they had meant to each other, on principle alone had decided to defect and side with Meredith. That blade had run clean through Hawke’s heart and taken all his guts out with it. Aveline he might have expected to refuse to assist, and Sebastian, but he’d always believed Fenris would be there for him. As he recalled the morning Fenris had walked away, suddenly his refusal to fight at Hawke’s side all made a little more sense, especially given that in the meantime, while Fenris fought with his own inner demons, Hawke had fallen hard for Anders, completely out of the blue.

And yet all it took was Hawke mentioning slavery and suddenly Fenris was at his side as though he’d never left. As though maybe that one thought reminded him how much Hawke had helped him, how he’d loved him as a friend to immediately jump and say yes whenever the former slave needed his help defying his old master. In another life, maybe, he could see them being tied at the hip instead of him and Anders and yet that subtle thrum of sex hummed between them every time they spoke. Or maybe it was just the lyrium fused with Fenris’s skin reacting with Hawke’s magic, who could say?

He would miss that voice, though. Those battle cries on the field. How he’d managed to learn how to control and direct his lyrium tattoo in a way that made him a glowing blue light that danced and sped around the field like a gory, glorious warrior beacon that never failed to both impress and inspire. The way that no matter who Hawke was fighting or how, somehow Fenris was always _there, right there_ getting between him and harm, lashing out at whomever he fought, defending him like the most terrifying version of a bodyguard anyone could imagine. He’d miss that certainty, that knowledge that Fenris always _always_ had his back.

Merrill, so silly and naïve, missing out on most of the gang’s dirty jokes and innuendos. So screwed up wanting to deal with the demon for her mirror and yet trusting Hawke to murder her should things go wrong as they would have. Hawke firmly believed he’d be coming down Sundermount without Merrill that day, which had made his heart ache all the way up. And yet she lived still and only because her Keeper loved her more than the entirety of her clan.

That said something, really, when you put your thoughts to it to puzzle out why.

Oh, the adventures they’d had. The silly rows, the banter, the hilarious ale-snorting laughter, the drunken nights when arms and legs sprawled everywhere in Varric’s Hanged Man suite and some faces went places that never were mentioned thereafter.

His thoughts zoomed around his head like tangible objects, bouncing around from person to person, from topic to topic. Some part of him knew this was the aftermath of what’d happened kicking in, the come-down, the part where after the adrenalin fades and you question what in the name of Andraste’s sweet ass just happened, when men often fell apart into their mugs of stout ale.

He would never, ever forget the day Anders had finally given in, had at last accepted Hawke’s insistent teasing and flirting. The want, the need, panting, breathy, scared, elated and in disbelief, how Anders kissed him there in his clinic, in full view of the few patients and staff milling about but even then stopped, even after getting what he wanted so desperately, allowing Hawke one more chance to escape from Anders’ madness unscathed.

Hawke had left his door unlocked that night. What might have become of them all had he not?

He loved Anders beyond compare. For reasons that often didn’t even make sense to him. But when, really, did matters of the heart make sense? His mother had turned away nobility, a secure and bright future with de Launcet, to marry an apostate mage and leave her homeland for what she’d thought was forever.

And what of Ninette? She’d defied her family’s wishes to marry that jackass Ghyslain de Carrac, so madly in love with him, and where had it taken them? Him, accused by her family of harming her. A decade of a marriage in shambles, with her sleeping around so much it had apparently become the worst-kept secret in certain circles and the Blooming Rose. Only for her to meet a grisly end at the hands of the same madman who’d killed Leandra, his own mother.

Hawke hadn’t even said good-bye to Gamlen, but he figured the man wouldn’t care. He’d just stay at the Amell house, probably lease out his Lowtown place. After all, the Hawke servants were still there and he’d be waited on in luxury, so why not, right? The Hawke crest would most likely be replaced once the blood had dried.

In spite of telling Mother that he wanted to make the Hawke name known, respectable, recognized, in the face of reality he guessed he didn’t care one way or the other now. What difference did money or status make in a world that would sooner hunt down and kill people whose only crime was being born different, than it would try to help those people while recognizing they were still _people_? Somewhere along the way mages had become independently operating weapons to a lot of people, rather than feeling, thinking individuals.

The sound of footsteps coming closer raised his hackles and Hawke’s hand grasped his staff on instinct until he felt the familiar tingle that could mean the footfalls belonged to one man and one man only.

“Fenris?”

Then more footsteps and more until there were enough that Hawke could no longer count distinct ones. And then the herbal-spiced scent of Anders wafting past and before he knew it, his love was pulling him from the shadows to face people Hawke never thought he’d be seeing again. People he’d already said his good-byes to.

“You know,” Merrill chirped nervously, as she always did, “you were forced to take me with you back to Kirkwall, but you were never forced to become my friend.” She smiled shyly up at him. “No matter what foolishness I undertook you stood by me. You always had my back. If there’s one thing you’ve taught me, Hawke, it’s that friendship is the most valuable thing you can own, and you don’t need to live in Hightown – or a city at all, really – to find it.”

“I have never known a man like you, and a mage at that,” Fenris picked up from Merrill’s trilled final words. "But the day you swore to help me escape my past once and for all no matter what it took, I made an oath to myself that I would protect you until the day you died.” Fenris looked him in the eye man-to-man. “A promise I can hardly fulfill if I am an ocean away.”

Hawke swallowed hard. What were they saying? His eyes moved to Anders.

“While I was getting the boat,” he explained in his soft voice that melted every ounce of Hawke’s willpower on a frequent basis, “I…happened upon the only friends I think we have left.”

“Well,” Merrill corrected, “not the only ones. Just the only ones who can travel with you right now. Couple of elves. Cute ones.”

She smiled. Fenris kind of…blushed. Then chuckled.

A rowboat docked to Hawke’s left.

“All right, you sourpusses. We’ve got two weeks on the open seas to get to your intended port, so get your perfect asses aboard before I change my mind.”

Hawke turned and gaped. “Isabela?”

“Who else would come rescue these sexy packages from this godforsaken place?”

“Castillo?” he asked breathlessly, praying that she was safe at last.

“Oh, he got what was coming to him. And so did Tevinter. But we’ve plenty of time on the _Crimson Scar_ for me to tell you those fish tales, oh Eye of the Storm. Come on, before that Cullen fellow changes his mind about letting you leave.”

Hawke looked at her, then Anders, then at Merrill and Fenris and back to Anders again. “How?”

He shrugged. “Our life on the run starts now, love.” His small, tentative, beautiful smile made Hawke suddenly feel and know with certainty that no matter what right or wrong he’d done, no matter how he and his ragtag bunch of misfits had affected Kirkwall and the fortunes of those in it, this night was the beginning of a new life for them all. Anders had expected to be dead at Hawke’s hand by this time, not leaving hand-in-hand with him for parts unknown.

“I have one rule,” Fenris growled as he boarded the rowboat that would ferry them, Hawke presumed, to Isabela’s ship. “No Eluvians allowed. Ever.”

“And no brooding,” Merrill bit back. Fenris reddened. “And that, yes, please, more of that.”

“Not helping,” Fenris groused.

“ _Crimson Scar_?” Anders asked as he and Hawke climbed aboard. “Really?”

“Well, what can I say?” Isabela countered as she perched all thighs and boobs at the bow of the boat. “Woman gets a new ship, she wants its name to be the sexiest thing she can think of.” She looked pointedly at Hawke’s face.

Hawke rolled his eyes. Anders chuckled and said, “She’s got the right end of it there.”

Their lives had gone to hell in a handbasket in Kirkwall, largely because it had been doing so long before any of them had arrived. Like the ball rolling downhill and he and his friends had been scattered asunder simply by standing in its way.

Time to see what else the Maker had in mind for his next series of unfortunate and unpredictable events. But first, maybe some sleep. Yes. Lots and lots of sleep.


End file.
